Tag: industrial design

Call it a man cave, a bachelor pad, or even your fortress of solitude. This is your apartment or a room typically decorated to a man’s tastes usually without female influence. Often these spaces serve to help the gentleman relax and unwind. Sometimes they can be for motivation and inspiration. Continue reading “The Best Masculine Fixtures“

Each year Electrolux challenges design students all over the world to create a concept that is relevant to the time and raises questions about what design will be like in the future. Established in 2003, Electrolux Design Lab is a global design competition that is focused around themes such as healthy eating, sustainable living and internet generation. This year’s theme calls for Creating Healthy Homes under three focus areas; Culinary Enjoyment, Fabric Care and Air Purifying.

Electrolux awards four prizes: 1st place is 5,000 Euros and a 6-month paid internship at an Electrolux global design center. A 2nd prize of 3,000 Euros, 3rd prize of 2,000 Euros and People’s Choice prize for 1,000 Euros are also on offer.

The competition received over 1,700 submissions from over 60 countries is now entering the second stage of the competition with 70 submissions moving forward. At this stage, contestants are asked to deliver rendered CAD-files of their concepts with a logo, contextual images and design details.

Starting tomorrow through June 28, the public can vote online for their favorite concept. The three most popular submissions in the public voting will make it directly to the next round.

You may vote for one concept only once, but you can vote for different concepts so it is ok to support more than one contestant and idea.

Explore Concepts

Tree of Life

Replacing the refrigerator, oven, dishwasher, and even the cook, the Tree of Life (TOL) is the brainchild of Bulgarian designer Zahari Ganchev.

Based on the shapes of a Beobab tree and a Ganoderma lucidum mushroom, the biomorphic Tree of Life stores your food in its trunk and cooks meals on its mushroom caps. Individual ingredients are drawn from their refrigerated, organic polymer pouches when you order up a dish. Lasers (lasers!) cut and clean the food before the appliance deposits them on ceramic-coated stainless steel plates and cooks them for you. Your nutritional intake is monitored every meal, and replacing your plate tells the cooking lasers (more lasers!) to clean it for you.

Halo Fuse

The Halo Fuse is a rotating induction cooktop with the freedom of cooking anywhere on the surface and is designed to be located on an island work surface. This concept was submitted by Ryan Gardner, a senior industrial design student at Kendall College of Art and Design.

Special pans with detachable handles are used with this concept so large meals with multiple pans can be easily accommodated. Temperature settings are selected through sliding electronic controls within the pot handle. The pans synch with the cooking surface so if you need to reposition it the same settings are kept.

Fortunately, there is also a touch screen interface located to the side of the cooktop to show the location and setting of each pan. This could be very handy for multiple chefs.

PureTowel

Intended for bathroom use, the PureTowel replaces your standard towel hook with a Smart Hanger that can disinfect your towel in seconds with UV light. This clever concept comes from Leobardo Armenta, a 3rd year Industrial design student at Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.

Simply hang your used towel on the Smart Hanger and the vertical motion of the UV ring will start, leaving your towel dry and clean.

The towel is dried by a silent, high-speed fan located inside the ring and the UV light has sensors so human contact is avoided.

This concept is great for families concerned about allergies and passing germs that thrive on damp towels.

Versailles Mesh tile from Ann Sacks is a mix of industrial chic and authentic technique. Hand-silvered security glass with wire mesh looks like aged mirror with spotting and random streaking. The wire mesh adds a modern graphic component that is trending in tile a the moment.

According to Ann Sacks, these tiles are made to order and must be installed with an expansion joint between them so the glass will not crack. Is this something you’d use in your next industrial or rustic chic kitchen project?

Symmons Industries, the Braintree, MA-based manufacturer of commercial and residential plumbing products, demonstrated its “Design Studio Live,” a process that allows designers to quickly and easily craft unique bath fittings for any project.

Design Studio Live gives Symmons the capabilities to come to a designer’s office and create a unique, custom-designed bath fittings that create an individual style and an ideal bath experience for the customer with the Signature Design Series (SDS) Software.

SDS has the uncommon ability to create unique designs at reasonable costs thanks to several factors. To begin with, Symmons’ design process is quick and efficient. Specialized software allows Symmons

designers to turn an initial concept into a 3-D prototype in as little as four days. Since the program is based on open source coding, designers can take any faucet off the Symmons website and ask to see it with modifications, giving SDS a starting point that will reduce the overall design time and lower the associated design costs.

This program has had great success with Hotel and Multi-Family clients where unique design builds equity. For example, it enhances the showering experience in hotels which is a top priority for guests and it makes condominiums more memorable which is key to sales.

I watched as they made a 3-D prototype right there on the show floor and being able to feel how a faucet will feel in my hands removes all doubt of how a CAD drawing will translate into the actual item.

Since Symmons does not charge for the design services or the prototype, a designer can “wow” his or her client by presenting the prototype model at the Concept Presentation.